If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Please note that posts from new users are now moderated. If you have just joined this forum and post a new message it will be held in the moderation queue until a member of staff approves it. Please be patient and our staff will review your submission as soon as possible.

Re: Spelling System for Dialect

Originally Posted by Frank Antonson

OK. First of all, yes, an advantage of the standard spelling system is that people can read it and make the pronunciation their own. Everybody, probably reads it somewhat differently. And that is a good thing. I do not mean to say that one should not use standard spelling. I actually wrote a long essay on this subject entitled "The Folk Makes No Apology", which I will soon put on my blog.

Unless one uses (or bases one's own phonetic/phonemic transcription on) an objective, universally accepted system, such as the IPA, one simply cannot know exactly what sound any symbols you use represent.

Secondly, if you mean a "cot" on which one sleeps, I would spell it, as I say it, \kot\.

That does not tell me whether it sounds like my 'cot' or my 'caught'.

Finally, the problem for me with your transcription of "British" is that it requires a letter that is not always being used on a keyboard. That slows me way up.

This is, of course a problem. On a normal computer keyboard, even using Insert - Symbols and sites such as this, it is simply not possible to produce accurate phonetic transcriptions, This is why SAMPA, X-SAMPA and SAMPROSA were developed.
=we ma beab~l tu rit fAst~r if we yuz 0ur On sist~mz, but dhat duznt men dh~t udh~z will nO egzakleh0u 0ur w~ds A t~ be pr~n0unst=.

Re: Spelling System for Dialect

...
Later this spring I will be trying to use it for Brazilian Portuguese. That may be even more difficult because of the nasal quality of the "-ao". but allowances can be made.

...

I don't know much Brazilian Portuguese - though in Lisbon I was once mistaken for a Brazilian (because of my over-precise/Spanish-like pronunciation together with my height, both of which marked me as an outsider - in spite of my (at the time ) near-fluency). But the Continental Portuguese nasalized '„o' does occur - phonetically though not phonemically - in English. If you say 'downtown' or 'downtime' (Or 'Downton Abbey' - for UK residents) and stop before the /t/ you get the requisite sound (or at least something very close to it) - so long as you don't release the /n/.

Re: Spelling System for Dialect

Yes, I know. And that is very well explained. The sound is not actually hard for English-speakers to make.

The problem that I will run into is the "tilde" ???? that swung dash over the "a". I don't want to slow my writing up to the extent required to make it. I would prefer not to use an international keyboard. But I don't think that it will be asking too much for a Portuguese-speaker to realize that \nao\ ("no") or \Sao Paolo\ "Sao Paulo" should be pronounced nasally.

My purpose with my spelling system is not scientific, but literary. I want to be able to write in my dialect quickly and without shame.

Re: Spelling System for Dialect

There I am teaching punctuation, but for the sake of some German-speakers who showed interest in it, I show what English looks like if I spell it phonetically.

I watched your video, in which you transcribed (roughly) phonemically, not phonetically.

I am sorry, Frank, but your system seems to me to be unscientific, unhelpful and - even for your own dialect - inaccurate. I simply do not see the point of using a system like this, when there is a sound, if complex, system in the IPA, and sound, and moderately simple, phonemic systems, American and British, which are used in most dictionaries and coursebooks available to learners. Our views are so different that I don't think there is any point in my saying anything else on the subject.

Re: Spelling System for Dialect

Are there any short stories or poems written in IPA?

I am fine with "unscientific". I have no wish to be scientific. "Unhelpful" I also understand. But someone, for example a German, trying to learn to speak English and confronted with the word "knight" \nuyt\, I still nurture some hope that my system could be helpful.

I would not have started this thread if I had not noticed that so many German viewers of my mini-course "Englisch fuer Duetsche" were interested in the way I could spell to help them.

My original query was about whether or not there was some better system that used no exotic symbols and could be written quickly. I would still like to know. I am not convinced that IPA is the solution. Who would read it? Who could? I think only fellow linguists.

Re: Spelling System for Dialect

Originally Posted by Frank Antonson

Are there any short stories or poems written in IPA?

....

Yes - but I'm not sure if they're available online. In my 'Principles of the IPA' booklet (32pp, I guess) the same story (about a contest between the North Wind and the Sun) is transcribed in 40-50 different languages (including 3 or 4 dialects of English).

Re: Spelling System for Dialect

I have now looked at SAMPA. It would not serve my purposes. I keep thinking of Robert Burns or Mark Twain's writing in Huckleberry Finn.

It dawned on me that so much of Robert MacNeil's The Story of English would give me chances to hear various English dialects and to try to transcribe them if I cared to.

You, 5jj, are probably right about "phonemic" vs "phonetic". I always found the difference between the two confusing. Then, there is also "phonics" as a way to teach reading and writing.

I believe that most English speakers use about 42 phonemes. We have about 26 letters to represent them. "X" can be "ks", "C" can be "s" or "z" except when combined as "ch", and "Q" can be "kw". For a glottal stop I think that an apostrophe works well. As far as the nuances involved with the vowels and diphthongs are concerned, I am not sure that any system -- even the IPA -- can adequately represent them. They seem to be on such a "sliding scale". E.g. "cot" and "caught" in my dialect sound identical -- \kot\.

I will look to see what became of World English.

Finally, I am sorry if you, 5jj, will say nothing more on this subject. You seem to bring to it considerable expertise.